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Thursday, December 11, 2014

Award-winning Rotherham manufacturer, AESSEAL is well underway with an £8.7m project to expand the company's UK R&D and manufacturing capability.

With its global headquarters at Templeborough, AESSEAL is the world's fourth largest mechanical seal business and manufactures seals to stop leakage of harmful liquids and gases into the environment used in the oil, chemical, gas, mining, water and other industries.

In 2012, the growing firm secured secured £1.7m from the Government's Regional Growth Fund (RGF) towards an £8.7m project. The money is being used to expand the company's UK R&D and manufacturing capability in delivering high-technology sealing applications to the world market. To date the £1.44m in RGF funding they have drawn down has been matched by an investment of £3.3m and secured 56 jobs as result of this investment, with similar numbers of jobs expected to have been generated in the company's supply chain.

AESSEAL purchased land adjoining the main Rotherham site, which has already expanded a number of times, and Chris Rea, group managing director at AESSEAL said at the time that it would "allow us to double our current Rotherham-based workforce at whatever pace our customers allow our business to develop." It already employs more than 1,650 people worldwide, of whom approximately 650 are in the UK and Ireland and more than 330 in Rotherham.

AES Engineering Ltd, parent to the AESSEAL Group, has increased sales and profits every year for over 30 years and reported 2013 sales at £147m, with exports accounting for more than 90% of the total. EBITDA (earnings before tax) rose to £24.6m. All of the product development, process development, information technology and more than 90% of manufacturing continues to be based in the UK.

The RGF is the government's main source of funding for economic development and regeneration and has the main aims of creating jobs, encouraging private investment and supporting areas dependent on the public sector.

Business Secretary Vince Cable is set to visit AESSEAL today and meet with 23-year-old graduate Luke Purshouse, the 100,000th person to get a job as a result of RGF.

Mr Purshouse said: "Growing up in a mining family, in a mining area, means engineering is in my blood. I am excited by the opportunity to design products that make things better and ultimately is a benefit to society."

Vince Cable will also meet 19-year-old Madeleine Kearney (pictured), an apprentice test Engineer at AESSEAL. Offering a real alternative to university, AES launched a £1.25m apprenticeship scheme to take on ten apprentices a year, in various areas of engineering, from manufacturing to design, with training taking place at the state-of-the-art AMRC Training Centre in Rotherham.

With 230 locations worldwide, supplying customers in 104 countries, it is not just in the UK that the company continues to expand. AESSEAL India has recently expanded its operations by opening a new Service Center in the newly created state of Telangana in Hyderabad.

Dr Cable is also expected to announce today that Rotherham has been selected as one of the two locations for the joint headquarters of a new national advanced manufacturing college alongside Coventry.